CAUSES OF RHEUMATISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1939, Page 6

CAUSES OF RHEUMATISM

POPULAR FALLACIES EXPOSED

Popular fallacies about rheumatism, and in particular the belief that the disease is caused or aggravated by coid and damp, are exposed by Sir Leonard Hill in an article in the British Medical Journal. Rheumatic diseases, Sir Leonard points out. are most prevalent in the temperate zones —northern Europe, Japan, North China, the United. Staes, south-east Australia. Tasmania and New Zealand. They are practically unknown in the tropics and, more significant, in the Arctic. The cold and often foggy Arctic regions, he writes are among the healthiest in the world. Arctic explorers may sleep out in the wet. snow, get their clothes soaked, be chilled, and suffer frostbite, but no catarrh or pneumonia. In Britain, rheumatism is 20 times more prevalent among wage-earners than in the propertied class, and affects women nearly two and a-half times more than men.'But it is not purely a disease of poverty; there are significant differences among different sections of the poorer part of the population. These and many other facts lead Sir Leonard to the conclusion that rheumatism is caused mainly by “conditions produced by dirty, artificially heated, and ill ventilated houses, and density of popu lation. the ill-effect of those conditions being intensified by a diet in which the protective foods are deficient."